The Land of Green Plums Contributor(s): Müller, Herta (Author), Hofmann, Michael (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0312429940 ISBN-13: 9780312429942 Publisher: Picador USA OUR PRICE: $18.00 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2010 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary |
Dewey: FIC |
Physical Information: 0.76" H x 5.59" W x 8.24" (0.58 lbs) 272 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Set in Romania at the height of Ceauescu's reign of terror, The Land of Green Plums tells the story of a group of young people who leave the impoverished province for the city in search of better prospects and camaraderie. But their hopes are ravaged, because the city, no less than the countryside, bears everywhere the mark of the dictatorship's corrosive touch. All the narrator's friends--teachers and students of vaguely dissident allegiance--betray her, do away with themselves, or both. As they do so, we see the way the totalitarian state comes to inhabit every human realm and how everyone, even the strongest, must either bend to the oppressors or resist them and thereby perish. Herta M ller, herself a survivor of Ceausescu's police state, speaks from intimate experience. Scene by scene, in language at once harsh and poetic, she constructs a devastating picture of a society and a generation ruined by fear. In simple images of hieroglyphic power--policeman filling their pockets and mouths with green plums; girls sleeping with abattoir workers for bags of offal; a docile proletariat making things no one wants--tin sheep and wooden watermelons--M ller anatomizes a country and its citizens and the corruption that has rotted the core of both. |
Contributor Bio(s): Muller, Herta: - Herta Müller is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the European Literature Prize. She is the author of, among other books, The Hunger Angel and The Land of Green Plums. Born in Romania in 1953, Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceausescu's secret police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin.Hofmann, Michael: - Michael Hofmann is a poet and frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review, and is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost translators of works from German to English. He lives in London. |